October 23, 2014 AT 9:00 am

Impressive Beetlejuice Costume #electronichalloween

Some people love Halloween so much that they spend all year planning their costumes. I love that kind of enthusiasm. Instructables user Mr. Noack is one of those people, and he’s done incredible work with his costumes in the past. This year’s ensemble is all about Beetlejuice. He made the costume, the sandworm, and the house. He’s been collecting materials for nearly a year, and he’s been working on the project regularly since August 14th. He’s dedicated. The finished costume is highly detailed and lights up and has moving parts.

Noack documented every step of the build from materials to making the house to customizing the mask to making the Beetlejuice sign. The thorough write-up had to take almost as much time as construction. Here’s a little about how he modified a store bought mask:

My mask was a bit of an adventure. When I realized that the mask I bought was pretty crappy, I cut the lower half off and thought that I would make a half mask. When I mocked it up, it thought it looked way better. I decided to buy a set of dental distortions that I would wear in conjunction with the half mask. Months later when I started to re-vistit the mask, I stumbled upon the shell of an old animotion mask that I purchased at Value Village last year. When I combined the crappy Beetlejuice mask with the plastic shell, it reminded me of the Beetlejuice from the snake/bannister scene from the movie. I was encouraged by this, and I went for it. I got everything glued together, I added hair, moss, and touched up the paint job.

The next day I decided I wasn’t in love with the mask and I made the difficult decision to rip things apart and try something else. I felt like the teeth made the mask look too cartoony. So…. I grabbed my Dremel, the one that I won for my Chucky costume and I started some mask making dental surgery. I removed all of the teeth, installed my set of dental distortions that I bought on ebay. The result was a more realistic looking mask. I touched up the paint job again, added some more moss, and some more hair. I glued a piece of wire on the inside of the neck to help add some shape. I was very pleased with the result. I might consider blacking out my eyes with a bit of make-up to complete the effect. Maybe next year I’ll finally get around to sculpting and casting my own mask.

See the costume in action:

Read more about the making of this amazing Beetlejuice costume at Instructables.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each weekday this month we’ll be bringing you ideas and projects for an Electronic Halloween! Expect wearables, hacks & mods, costumes and more here on the Adafruit blog! Working on a project for Halloween this year? Share it with us on Google+, in the comments below, the Adafruit forums, Facebook, or Twitter— we’d love to see what you’re up to and share it with the world (tag your posts #ElectronicHalloween). Tune in to our live shows, Wearable Electronics with Becky Stern, 3D hangouts with Matt, Pedro, and Noe, and Ask an Engineer, featuring store discount codes, ideas for projects, costumes, and decorations, and more!